CHRISTMAS IN NOTTING HILL
It’s a cold winter’s night in the UK, and the dazzling floodlights of AFC Newbourne’s home ground are visible for miles in every direction across the London skyline, each dappled beam only matched in reach by the echoing caterwauls of the staunchly loyal blues fans. A sneaky longball has reached star winger Graham Savoy (William Moseley) who takes it neatly on the inside of his right foot, racing toward the opposing keeper to slot a low driven shot cleanly into the far corner of the goal. The crowd, so dense it could almost be mistaken for a crude copy and paste job, go suitably apeshit. Another win for the almighty AFC Newbourne.
Except, as only the most learned footie fans amongst you will be aware, AFC Newbourne doesn’t exist.
Having been invented whole cloth for the Hallmark Channel’s latest winter warmer, Christmas in Notting Hill (2023), AFC Newbourne’s existence raises a multitude of questions. What London team are AFC Newbourne supposed to be a stand-in for? Or, at the very least, what level of English football are they playing at? And who is Graham Savoy meant to be a spoof of? A far more enticing Christmas mystery than whatever kitsch nonsense Tom Wambsgans is poking his nose into.
The plot of Christmas in Notting Hill is a Mad Libs-style fill-the-gaps Christmas rom-com—the Asylum-style allusion to a certain Richard Curtis film in the title is quite indicative. Accomplished, go-getting (but, most importantly, philanthropic) American bachelorette Georgia (Sarah Ramos) is spending the festive period visiting her younger sister in dear old Blighty, learning about all sorts of twee British traditions like trifles and Christmas crackers. “Are those, like, crackers with Santa’s face on them?” asks Georgia at one point, Americanly.
Undertaking some last minute Christmas shopping, she bumps into a softly-spoken, broad-shouldered British husband-in-the-offing, who makes her go gooey-eyed over discussions of her childhood ACL injury and their shared love of soccer. “It’s football…” he corrects her with a smarmy fuck-me smile, not for the last time. But—gasp!—there’s more to this buttery-faced toff than first meets Georgia’s eye, in as much as he’s both the famous footballer Graham Savoy and (because one hidden identity wasn’t enough) the brother of her sister’s beau. Will their barely sizzling chemistry be enough to carry them through this maze of emotional bear traps? No spoilers here, folks.
With the stage set and the pitch turfed, it’s time to kick off our investigation proper. The first major clue comes early on when Savoy, nursing his own ACL tear, mentions his dream of winning the Champions League with AFC Newbourne. Given that he’s in the latter stages of his career—Savoy is prone to reminiscing wistfully about his time playing football, and Moseley would have been at least 35 at the time of shooting—we have to assume that this isn’t some far off pipe dream; a European cup is seemingly well within Newbourne’s grasp. Later, when asked about the progress of his injury, Savoy sarcastically remarks that he’ll be “starting against Tottenham next week”, further clarifying that A) he’s most likely playing in the Premier League (English cup games notwithstanding), ruling out AFC Newbourne’s league 2 namesakes AFC Wimbledon, and B) that Savoy is Harry Kane’s peer rather than a carbon copy. Unless they’re being cute.
Savoy’s public standing can give us some further breadcrumbs. Savoy isn’t just your average contemporary British striker—a Calvert-Lewin or even an Ollie Watkins—he’s a veritable superstar, whose face is plastered on T-side bus adverts which promise you’ll “Soar high like Savoy”, and whose every move is stalked by lip-biting groupies, chanting Newbourne fans, and a handful of uncharacteristically polite paparazzi. His poor mum is even in on the action, running a bizarre non-profit Christmas stall at Portobello Road Market that sells tat with Savoy’s giant head on it. While it’s never mentioned outright, you have to assume that Savoy is a national team regular—but given that England’s current squad is defined by its youth, its diversity, and the scarcity of sensitive poshos with family homes in Notting Hill, that does raise some minor issues.
Despite the earlier aside about Spurs, the obvious parallel in terms of age and stardom would be England’s all-time top goalscorer, Harry Kane—and, for the prospect of English football’s most loveable gorm mumbling his way through romantic entreaties alone, that conclusion is quite enticing. Unfortunately, Savoy is more Benedict Cumberbatch than Ben White—a thespy upper cruster who looks far more snug in a cashmere scarf than a pair of shin pads. Simultaneously, his role at Newbourne is poorly defined. In the few clips we do see of him during game time, he’s playing as a Number 7 on the right wing, and yet Savoy’s own brother refers to him as Newbourne’s “star striker”. Either Savoy is an incredibly versatile player given an unorthodox amount of creative freedom in a topflight team (Pep would never), or it would seem this line of enquiry is a dead end.
The Newbourne stadium itself throws up a few more red herrings. Not only do the pitch side ad boards mention the Championship, not the Premier League, but the green and yellow colour scheme is at odds with the blue and white kits we’ve seen emblazoned with Savoy’s name. More pressingly, the grounds are a lot pokier than you’d expect for a league-topping super club, looking far closer to Selhurst Park than the Emirates. Out of frame, these snafus can be explained by the fact that the stadium sequences were shot in Belfast’s National Football Stadium (the multiple @northernireland banners should probably be a giveaway). In frame, the question remains: how many Premier League sides actually play in an 18k cap venue? Seemingly aware of this error, whenever it’s game time the Hallmark team cut to establishing shots of a totally different, jarringly massive stadium. To avoid the dimension-warping questions that raises, let’s assume a consistent capacity of about 20-30,000 people—hardly befitting a superstar of Savoy’s calibre. Perhaps, finally, the case has gone cold.
But wait! There’s hope yet. In the film’s coda, we jump forward to the next year’s Boxing Day fixture which sees Savoy back from injury, happy, in love, and in the form of his life. Firing in another clinical winner, the roar of the crowd gives way to the commentator, who congratulates Newbourne on hitting the top of the Premier League, and—crucially to our investigation—notes that they’re likely to qualify for the Champions League next season… for the first time. Paired with the stadium size, this narrows our pool dramatically to only three 23/24 season Premier League clubs located in London who have never qualified for the Champions League: Brentford, Crystal Palace, and Fulham.
As the only club with an even partially-blue home kit and an English-born right winger who wears number 7, Palace kind of win by default, which would make Savoy an analog for… then 22-year-old Michael Olise (which, on account of his race, age, and lack of London-wide ad campaigns, some may say was an awkward fit). An argument could also be made for Brentford striker Ivan Toney, especially given that he has a few England caps and has since elected to take an early retirement sunning it up in Saudi Arabia (which he’s supposedly loving because “it reminds him of Milton Keynes”), but, either way, the sad truth is laid bare. Christmas in Notting Hill is just another example of Hollywood whitewashing. And what’s more Christmassy than that?
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